José Antonio Suárez Londoño

b.1955 Medellin, Colombia; lives in Medellin


Colombian-born José Antonio Suárez Londoño, or JASL as he refers to himself, follows a highly structured studio practice of reading and drawing every day. His work as an artist is centered around drawing, and by extension printmaking. His early studies were in biology and botany; only later pursuing art when he moved to Geneva, where his father held a diplomatic post.

He continues this daily practice today, pulling inspiration from reading and responding to such disparate literary sources as Ovid, Rimbaud, Patti Smith, and Sam Shepard as a way to prompt a drawing. Fragments of text in Spanish, English, and French are sometimes incorporated in to the drawings as well, deliberately floating in reverse in the printed imagery. The interior world of his imagination reveals itself in intertwined figures, animals, maps, botanicals, and mechanical forms. Most recently at Tamarind, JASL created a series of intimate drawings on stone, each one like a notebook page from another century.

JASL exhibits his work internationally, including Ordovos in London; and his works can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, NY and the Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna as well as in other major institutions.